Intervention
by Tech Duinn
Summary: He didn’t lie, not really. But he had caused a stalemate that wasn’t healthy for either of them, and it was time to correct that mistake. Implied B/B. Nonspecific spoilers for 100th episode, most of season 5, and “Mayhem on a Cross.”


Intervention

He'd honestly thought it would help them at the time. During the three days of Agent Booth's coma, he had been busy researching about any and all possible side effects that might manifest, and the impact they would have on Agent Booth's ability to adequately perform his duties within the Bureau. Hallucinations, short-term memory loss, mood swings, changes in personality, impaired judgment, and amnesia were the random smattering that Agent Booth had suffered from after waking. While the Agent had attempted to play it cool during their twice weekly sessions after the coma, Sweets had been able to pick up on the older man's hesitance and self-doubt.

Those were two symptoms you did not want to display when telling a woman as emotionally fragile as Dr. Brennan that you were in love with her.

Booth needed to have an absolute certainty of his feelings before confronting his partner with such a devastating revelation. Otherwise the situation would blow up in everyone's face, and while Sweets desperately wished he could give them the time to sort things out and realize their mutual affection, he was an FBI appointed psychiatrist, and his duty, first and foremost, was to protect the Bureau. He'd just been protecting them at the same time.

He didn't lie, exactly. Booth's brain had lit up like a Christmas tree while he was in the coma, and the areas affected had been the ones most commonly associated with love. It was the scan before the procedure that he had embellished upon. To get an accurate reading of Booth's feelings toward Dr. Brennan, he would have needed to show the man a picture of his partner while he was in the MRI. Love was a constant state, but the brain didn't react reliably enough when not visually stimulated to say one way or the other if Booth loved Dr. Brennan.

He honestly hadn't thought it would make that much of a difference. Booth usually did everything in his power to defy any diagnoses he made, psychological or otherwise. He'd expected a fight. He'd thought Booth would come shouting his love smugly from the rooftops sometime after the last of his symptoms faded away. All he got was months and months of silence. Unwittingly, he'd picked the most vulnerable spot Booth had and poked hard enough to make the man second guess absolutely everything related to his feeling for Dr. Brennan.

It was time for him to correct that mistake. Time for an intervention.

"_My book concludes that Brennan and Booth are in love with each other."_

* * *

AN: Ok, let me explain this one really quickly. This was a time restricted drabble (30 min) that is unedited. It is extremely rough, and I already know there are many writing flaws, the most glaring one being the lack of voice. I'll probably go back and rewrite this one, but I wanted to get it posted before the 100th episode, because it's sort of a speculation piece, mainly focused on why Sweets would chose this particular time to let Booth and Brennan read his book, especially with its controversial conclusion. (How he's planning on getting this book published without causing the FBI higher-ups to separate the dynamic duo is a question for another day.)

Also, Sweets' little brain scan trick at the beginning of the season bugged me. I researched whether love can be assessed through MRI images. In every experiment I found, the subjects were scanned while looking at a picture of their loved one, not just scanned randomly to look for signs of love. It is possible that Booth's hallucination would cause reactions in the "love areas," which would be unseen in a normal MRI taken before a medical procedure. I'm not a trained psychologist, psychiatrist, or any other kind of –ist that would give me any special knowledge of, or ability to decipher theses experiments or their findings. I might be 100% wrong about my assumptions.

Hope you enjoyed.


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